The relations between the styles of leadership of the school principals and the school culture

ABSTRACT With this research, which deals with the relationship between the transformational and transactional leadership styles of the school principals and the school culture, it is aimed to determine the issues like which style of leadership the school principals exhibit the most according to the perceptions of the primary school principals and teachers, what their perceptions concerning the culture in their schools are; what the relations between their styles of leadership and the school culture are; whether there are any significant differences in terms of their individual and professional characteristics and to develop suggestions to the practitioners and the researchers in the light of the findings. The survey has been conducted on the school principals and 950 teachers working in 50 primary schools within the boundaries of the İzmir Province Metropolitan Municipality in the 2002-2003 academic year. The data for the research have been collected with the "Personal Data Form" distributed to the research groups and an inventory named "The Inventory for The Leadership Styles of the School Principals and School Culture" for them to fill out. In the research, replies to eight sub-problems were analyzed with arithmetic mean, standard deviation, r statistics, t test, F statistics, Scheffee and LSD tests. The findings of this research can be summarized as follows: The school principals themselves think that they exhibit a transformational and transactional style of leadership. The teachers also perceive their school principals as transformational and transactional leaders. The school principals consider the school culture to be more positive than the teachers do. According to the school principals, there is a positive relationship between the transformational leadership style and the dimensions of co-operative culture, educational development culture and the social-educational culture aspects of the school culture and the transactional leadership style and the educational development dimension of the school culture. According to the teachers, there is a positive relationship between the transformational leadership style and the overall concept and dimensions of the school culture and the transactional leadership style with the overall concept, co-operative culture, educational development culture and the dimensions of the social-educational culture. The perceptions of the school principals concerning the transactional leadership styles vary significantly in terms of the socio-economic level of their schools. And their perceptions of the school culture vary depending on their educational levels. The perceptions of the teachers concerning the leadership styles of their school princi vary significantly in terms of how long they have worked, the status and socio-economicof their schools. And the perceptions of the teachers concerning the school culture vary significantly in terms of gender, how long they have worked, the status and socio-economic level of their schools. VII